Lifestyle

Dating Site For People With STIs Fined £10m

Dating Site For People With STIs Fined £10m

The parent company of a dating site for people with STIs is ordered to pay damages for displaying members’ images on other sites.

A dating website for people with sexually transmitted infections has been ordered to pay out $16.5m (£10.3m) after sharing a user’s profile with millions of people despite promising confidentiality.

A lawsuit alleged that the plaintiff – known only as John Doe – and other members of the Positive Singles site were misled about their privacy when they joined the site.

The service promised full confidentiality, saying it would not share data with third parties.

But parent company Successful Match mined profiles and displayed members’ images and other information on its subsidiary websites.

In the original complaint, Mr Doe said users were lured in with “empathetic sounding statements like ‘you feel like you are all alone in the world, do you wish there was a place where you didn’t have to worry about being rejected or discriminated’.”

The website describes itself as a “warmhearted and exclusive community for singles and friends with STDs” that “cares about your privacy more than other sites”.

A jury agreed with Mr Doe’s claim, and ordered the dating company to pay $1.5m (£940,000) in compensation to him, plus $15m (£9.4m) in punitive damages.

A similar case against the websites filed by two women from Canada and Washington state is ongoing.